Boston
The Boston, Melbourne, Oxford Universities Conversazioni on Culture is a stimulating series of talks which takes place every year in one of the three venues. This year’s topic was ‘Power Without Responsibility: Was Kipling Right? The Press.’ Yours truly was invited to be one of the speakers alongside worthies such as Andrew Roberts, Kenneth Minogue, Roger Kimball, Renata Adler, Melanie Phillips, John O’Sullivan and David Pryce-Jones. I was billed as giving ‘the occasional address’, which was a presentation defending harlots. If you remember the Kipling quote, used by Stanley Baldwin in a 1931 Westminster by-election, it ends, ‘the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages’. I thought the quote rather unfair to harlots and prepared a paper defending them. It was not a triumph, that’s for sure, but it wasn’t a total bomb either.
Actually, it was a singular honour to be invited.
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